Mary Church Terrell

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Mary Church Terrell bigraphy, stories - African Americans' rights activist

Mary Church Terrell : biography

September 23, 1863 – July 24, 1954

Mary Church Terrell (September 23, 1863 – July 24, 1954), daughter of former slaves, was one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree. She became an activist who led several important associations, including the National Association of Colored Women, and worked for civil rights and suffrage.

Legacy and honors

  • First Lady Mamie Eisenhower paid tribute to Terrell’s memory in a letter read to the NACW convention on August 1, writing, "For more than 60 years, her great gifts were dedicated to the betterment of humanity, and she left a truly inspiring record.""Mrs. Eisenhower Lauds Work of Mrs. Terrell," The Charleston Gazette, August 2, 1954, p. 6.
  • 1933 – At Oberlin College’s centennial celebration, Terrell was recognized among the college’s "Top 100 Outstanding Alumni".Current Biography 1942, pp. 827-30.
  • 1948 – Oberlin awarded Terrell the honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.
  • 1975 – The Mary Church Terrell house in the LeDroit Park neighborhood of Washington was named a National Historic Landmark.
  • In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Mary Church Terrell on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-963-8.
  • 2009- Terrell was among 12 pioneers of civil rights commemorated in a United States Postal Service postage stamp series.

Early life and education

Mary Church was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Robert Reed Church and Louisa Ayers, both former slaves. Robert Church was mixed-race and said to be the son of his white master, Charles Church. He acquired considerable wealth investing in real estate in Memphis. Multiple sources refer to Church as the first black millionaire, although it is now generally accepted that his wealth reached only about $700,000.Jessie Carney Smith, ed., “Robert Reed Church Sr.,” in Notable Black American Men, 1 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1999), 202. When Terrell was six years old, her parents sent her to the Antioch College Model School in Yellow Springs, Ohio, for her elementary and secondary education. Terrell, known to members of her family as "Mollie," and her brother were born during their father’s first marriage, which terminated in divorce. Their half-siblings, Robert, Jr. and Annette, were born during their father’s second marriage, to Anna (Wright) Church.

When Terrell majored in classics at Oberlin College, she was an African-American woman among mostly white male students. The freshman class nominated her as class poet, and she was elected to two of the college’s literary societies. She also served as an editor of The Oberlin Review. When she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1884, she was one of the first African-American women to do so. Church earned a master’s degree from Oberlin in 1888.

Career

Terrell taught at a black secondary school in Washington, DC, and at Wilberforce College, an historically black college founded collaboratively by the Methodist Church in Ohio and the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the state, which later owned and operated it. She studied in Europe for two years, where she became fluent in French, German, and Italian.

On October 18, 1891, in Memphis, Church married Robert Heberton Terrell, a lawyer who became the first black municipal court judge in Washington, DC. The couple met through M Street High School, a top academic high school, where Terrell taught and became principal.

Terrell had three children who died in infancy; their daughter, Phyllis, survived.Current Biography 1942, p. 829. Phyllis was named after Phillis Wheatley. The Terrells later adopted a second daughter, Mary.

Through her father, Terrell met Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. She was especially close to Douglass and worked with him on several civil rights campaigns. Shortly after her marriage to Robert Terrell, she considered retiring from activism to settle down. It was Douglass who persuaded her that her talents required her to do otherwise.